Art-based methodologies and school education: the emancipatory value of the performing arts in the post-pandemic era

The use of workshop, play and artistic-expressive activities in educational work with young people always holds great transformative potential. Indeed, these activities are not only opportunities for experiential and situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) but also activators and facilitators of the symbolizing processes. They allow us to experience relational dynamics that, although “simplified,” are easily found in everyday life experiences (Wulf & Zirfas, 2007). Starting from these premises, this paper aims to focus on the artistic-expressive workshop activities designed and carried out with two classes of 7-year-old children in an Italian elementary school. The objective is to highlight how art-based methodologies – especially in complex historical moment such as the one we lived during the pandemic – have a cognitive, affective, and social impact that involves the entire personality structure of the subjects who experience them (Corsi, 2020).